Demoscene: 30 years of creative programming

Markku Reunanen [email protected]

Demoscene?

● A technologically and creatively oriented community – A subculture? Hackers? Hobbyists?

● Started already in the early 1980s

● Main artifact: demos, real-time audiovisual presentations (and a lot more)

Why interesting or notable?

● A pre-Internet worldwide community

● Tens of thousands of works

● Mirrors the changing times, cultural adoption

● Crossover with games, media art and so on

Whoami

● Demo research since 2004 – Demoscene Research with Antti Silvast – Articles, WiderScreen thematic issue

● One of them, too. Mostly as a coder and a graphician (1991–) – Very common among other researchers as well

Outline

● General properties

● A chronology

● Now and in the future

● Readings and other pointers

Where are demos made?

● Largely a West and North European phenomenon, esp. (West) Germany and the Nordic Countries

● East Europe and Russia long behind the iron curtain, more activity after that

● Scarce elsewhere – Why? Hackers, otakus, technical reasons

“A typical scener”

● Heavily male-dominant hobby – As they've tended to be in general

● Originally teenagers and youngster – Later on, growing old – not necessarily a youth culture anymore – … and little rotation

Demogroups

● Demos are mostly made by groups – 3–5 people participate actively – Big and international groups, too

● Names such as: Scoopex, The Physical Crew, Booze Design

● And the Members have handles: Dr. Acid, Slayer, Marq – Notation: Broti/Digital Talk (“of”)

Roles

● You need at least a: – Programmer (coder) – Musician – Graphician – In essence, quite standard roles

● Other duties, too: – Leader, organizer, swapper, SysOp, hangaround, mascot etc.

Parties

● An important part of the culture – Started as copyparties – Networking, competitions, getting wasted – Typically yearly events (these days)

● Assembly, Revision, The Gathering, Alternative Party (The Party, Breakpoint)

● Party photos: http://www.slengpung.com/

Parties (2)

Not only demos

● Sceners produce a lot more – Images – Music – Videos – Disk magazines, diskmags (esp. 1990s) – These days also some games

Diskmags

● Scene journalism: R.A.W. #6

But is it art?

● Especially in the 1980s nobody thought they were doing “art”

● In the 1990s the art discourse emerges, together with “design demos”

● Recently, in the 2000s, very experimental works at times

● …so it must be art?

But is it art? (2)

● On the other hand, the works are made for the community itself – Some rare demo exhibitions in museums (e.g. Kiasma 2003)

● Some sceners are in the media art circles, but they're a minority

● Own values, technically-oriented, rarely political

A chronology

● Next let's look at some productions from the last 30 years

● There are possibly more than >100.000, so we can only scratch the surface

● For various platforms, so we'll stick to videos and emulators

Apple II

● Apple's second computer, 1977

Crack screens

● http://artscene.textfiles.com/intros/APPLEII/

Commodore 64

● World's most sold home computer, 1983

Crack intros

● Greetings and info screens at the beginning of cracked games

Crack intros (2)

● Bragging and contacts important

● Ingenious effect programming

● The same intro reused multiple times

● Examples:

– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78D9MwLPidw – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd3_aYlAZwM – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsMViGUGaQM

Towards demos

● Right from the beginning intros often made by someone else than the cracker

● Around 1990 an increasing divide – Legislation, different user generation, the death of C-64 – Swappers linked the two trades (pirates and demosceners) for long

Megademos

● Multiple screen collections

● Initially “interactive” (press space)

● In the early1990s the continuous trackmo style

● Examples:

– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fODLGHaMCsQ – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBtd-Fwkacg

Commodore Amiga (1985)

● Amiga 500 (1987) was popular here, too

Peak Amiga

● Amiga-demos emerged already in the mid- 1980s – A notable competitor was the audiovisually poorer Atari ST (1984)

● Increasing self-awareness, better sound and graphics capabilities

● Commodore bankruptcy in 1994

Amiga demos

● Red Sector Megademo (1989)

– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcnqcF0b2xw

● Scoopex: Mental Hangover (1990)

– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=085cxkahmwY

● Spaceballs: State of the Art (1992)

– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPSst20JEcE

● Andromeda: Nexus-7 (1994, AGA)

– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnFTW10Piyw

PC generations

● IBM PC, 1981

PC generations (2)

● A huge change in 34 years

● Initially poor sound and graphics capabilities

● Started improving towards the 1990s – SoundBlaster, Gravis UltraSound, VGA cards, CPU power

● Finally in the late 1990s affordable 3D accelerators

PC demos

● Space Pigs Megademo (1990)

– http://www.demoscene.tv/prod.php?id_prod=6650

● Complex: Dope (1995)

– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yJ5M3BY2Ts

● Blasphemy: Moral Hard Candy (1999)

– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWdofIubBTM

● RGBA: Elevated (2009), 4k-intro

– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YWMGuh15nE

Other platforms

● 1980s home computers – Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Atari ST, MSX, Amstrad CPC, Oric …

● Game consoles

● Mobile phones, PDAs

● Macintosh, Atari Falcon, Linux

● Browsers: Flash, JavaScript

Fit-039: Boy (2008)

● If time allows :)

Living fossils

● Old demo machines don't necessarily disappear – Nostalgia – Community – “Squeezing the last cycle out” ethics

● Especially the C-64 scene is still active – Even here a demoparty in 2015, Zoo

Sceners now

● Many work in various fields of new media – Programmers, designers, musicians, researchers, IT specialists

● A pre-school for the game industry?

● You learn useful skills, but... – A too easy narrative, incorporation, byproduct

The future of the scene?

● The community is still alive and productive, parties are held frequently – Large parties have turned game-centric

● Little rotation of members

● Certain decline in activity – Bent Stamnes's statistics: http://blog.subsquare.com/page/2/

Preservation challenges

● Machines and storage media don't last forever – Archives – Emulation – Videos: YouTube etc. – Migration, re-creation: rare

● Similar questions as in software, game and new media art preservation

Readings

● Tamas Polgar (2005): Freax: The Brief History of the Demoscene

● Anders Carlsson (2009): The Forgotten Pioneers of Creative Hacking and Social Networking

● Markku Reunanen (2010): Computer Demos – What Makes Them Tick?

Readings (2)

● Daniel Botz (2011): Kunst, Code und Maschine

● Patryk Wasiak (2012): 'Illegal Guys'

● WiderScreen thematic issue (1–2/2014) – http://www.widerscreen.fi/

Links

● Pouet.net: http://www.pouet.net/

● CSDb: http://www.csdb.dk/

● Demozoo: http://www.demozoo.org/

● Scene.org: http://www.scene.org/

● Party pics: http://www.slengpung.com/

● http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene

Thx!

Questions?